One Spirit
Commentary
It would be hard to document the assertion in detail and with wealth of satisfying data. But there are good reasons to picture less talk "per capita" or "per church" about the Spirit and Pentecost in the centuries preceding our own. Yes, Spirit is tucked away in biblical texts and hymns and all. But as for vital witness and presence, the twentieth century produces evidences.
On New Year's Eve 1900 a woman at a prayer meeting in Topeka started speaking in tongues. Next morning, in this telling of the story, her friends resolved to stay together, and something like modern Pentecostalism was being born, or showing up. At the end of the century, the pentecostal, charismatic, Spirit-filled movements are the fastest growing in Christianity, especially in the poor world where empowerment of the ordinary people does not come easily.
Pentecost is not to be used as a day of argument about exactly what speaking in strange tongues (xenoglossia) or tongues in general (glossolalia) means; or about doctrines of the Holy Spirit; or about the statistics of pentecostalism or antipentecostalism.
Pentecost instead is a celebration of the Spirit, however realized. It recognizes that on parched spiritual landscapes new things could happen and, in our time, are happening. It knows and shows that the story of Christian response is not confined to past Early Christian or Christian Good Old Days eras. The Spirit is there to empower and be witnessed to in the mix that we can also call Good New Days. Those who do observe it celebrate the surprising workings of a Spirit who makes Jesus, a story of the past, into Jesus Christ, who belongs to the present and is the power of the future.
Grist For The Mill
Acts 2:2-21
"Even upon my slaves, both men and women ..." says Yahweh in Joel, now quoted by Peter, "I will pour out my Spirit." And "they shall prophesy."
We can have a bit of special pleasure with this line of this text. Like all holiday texts, Acts 2 has been picked over from many angles. There are winds on which to comment, and tongues of fire, and defenses against the charge of drunkenness. Most of all, there is the strange experience of languages, a semi-repeat of the Babel story. Now people of many tongues come together through the action of the Spirit.
And there is the long quotation in Peter's sermon, a set of verses from Joel the prophet. If this was to explain away the charge of intoxication, it is an intoxicating way to do it. Here is a jumble of creatively upsetting expressions and experiences, a topsy-turvy of that world's, the world's, our world's way of thinking about how God gets prophecy accomplished.
What business do the very young people have on this scene? They are not ready; they have not yet been to seminary. And the old, old ones? They are supposed to remember, but they are likely to forget their dreams. The heavens play their part in this drama. Blood and fire and mist and darkness all announce the big change. But that slaves should be empowered to prophesy? The ancient world, in Joel's time and in Peter's time, had no room for them, no time to give them, no hearing they were ready to offer.
And that the prophet and preacher and evangelist make much of the fact that even -- where are the italics? -- slaves "both men and women ... shall prophesy"? What is going on here? Think about that.
1 Corinthians 1:3b-13
We have a mantra in these verses, all dealing with the single word placed before "Spirit." Same Spirit. The Spirit. The Spirit. Same Spirit. One Spirit. Same Spirit. The Spirit. One Spirit. One Spirit. Pardon my being repetitious, but it is Paul's fault. He was eager and now I am to get that one thought across by reference to the definite article and the concepts of "same" and "one."
Why? Because anyone looking at the Spirit-filled Christian world would be tempted to forget the theme and assign the activity to many inspirations, many spirits. There are almost 25,000 Christian denominations, each of them probably giving some Spiritual justification for separate existence. There are 1.7 billion people called by the name of Christ. Many of them are moved by the Spirit to express the power of God. Some through bad grammar and some through good. Some with organs and some with guitars. Some with a cup of water to the thirsty and others with doctoral dissertations. (We are talking about miracles, after Pentecost.) They seem to go off in all directions.
They do. They are supposed to, in a world that God created with diversity. But these individuals, sects, sets of talent, anarchic as they may appear, have not been merely so. There has been an "-archy" to them, a way of expressing authority and effecting God's work in the world. What gives them authority and makes them effective is this one and the same "the" Spirit. We have to do nothing except to test the spirits, to see whether they derive from this One, whether they are of God. More often than not they manifestly have been and are so. So we learn and rejoice and send them along the way.
John 7:37-39
Some days commentators must want to hide behind lecterns or jump out of windows or claim that they have the flu or their eyes are blurry or their hands are shaky, and they would like to be excused from commenting. The texts are too rich but also too obscure.
I, and you with me, am not likely to take drastic action in the face of this one. But we are allowed to gasp a bit and fall into near-silence. The problem has to do with all that is meant in respect to what or who is meant by "Spirit" here.
There had, after all, been a Spirit to whom to witness in ancient prophetic times. That was what the text from Joel was about hundreds of years before the Gospel of John was written. Yet here we hear that there had been "no Spirit" as yet, because "Jesus was not yet glorified."
God can work old things out of new things and new things out of old things. So something fresh must be meant in the current reference to the coming of the Spirit. It was. What occurred at Pentecost and in the witness of the New Testament letters was not a repudiation of what had been said in ancient days so much as a complementing of them.
Yet in a world in which Christ had been glorified, which meant and means in a world in which he had died, been raised, and ascended, something, everything, is supposed to be and to look different. The New Creation had begun. And in the language of John's gospel, it would continue, because it was given channels through which to flow, streams through which its renewing party would flow to others. These words were framed in this gospel after Jesus was glorified. By then people had been inflamed.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Numbers 11:24-30 (Lutheran alternate text)
Here we go again: the good Lord, true to form, is getting carried away once more, breaking out of all the limits we would like to impose, pouring out excess until it is spilling all over everything.
The story itself is rich. Leading the people out of bondage, Moses has run into a double problem. One is with supplies. With a claimed retinue of 600,000 -- still a fairly large city -- on foot in the wilderness (v. 21), this shouldn't be a surprise. Neither should the complaints. As any experienced pastor knows, not even parting the Red Sea and a continuous supply of supernatural manna would satisfy some people. In fact, Egypt is starting to look good. If only there was a little meat to go with the bread, we could have hamburgers!
The other problem is structure. Moses is griping right along with the rest of them. It sounds like he has just been through an annual meeting: "Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of this people on me? Did I conceive all this people?" (vv. 11-12). All these people grumbling and complaining and all he's got is a couple of assistant pastors!
Having heard both complaints, the good Lord sets out to answer -- but not with either balance or equanimity. If the people want meat, they can have it -- enough to make them sick (v. 19), enough to make them think that a tornado hit the McDonald's factory. Only the meat is quail, so that the ground is covered with them, a couple of yards deep and spread out for days' worth of walking.
The answer to the structural problem spills over the edges just as well. Following instruction, Moses gathers the seventy. In addition to their natural gifts, they receive a spiritual endowment -- a one-time-only prophetic gift indicating their qualification to serve with Moses. If Moses needs help, he's got it now.
But typically, when God's grace starts to flow it's a little difficult to contain. Eldad and Medad, a couple of characters left hanging around the tents for who knows what purpose, receive the spirit just like the seventy led outside the camp to stand in line.
It's enough to make a bureaucrat nervous. Sounding like he's just returned from his office in support to ministries, Joshua -- not surprisingly, an assistant -- wants this unfortunate spillage contained (v. 28).
But by this time, Moses knows better. Having griped himself, he's got quail to clean and probably the results of a sudden influx of meat in a vegetarian diet as well. When you take on the good Lord, you live with the results.
On New Year's Eve 1900 a woman at a prayer meeting in Topeka started speaking in tongues. Next morning, in this telling of the story, her friends resolved to stay together, and something like modern Pentecostalism was being born, or showing up. At the end of the century, the pentecostal, charismatic, Spirit-filled movements are the fastest growing in Christianity, especially in the poor world where empowerment of the ordinary people does not come easily.
Pentecost is not to be used as a day of argument about exactly what speaking in strange tongues (xenoglossia) or tongues in general (glossolalia) means; or about doctrines of the Holy Spirit; or about the statistics of pentecostalism or antipentecostalism.
Pentecost instead is a celebration of the Spirit, however realized. It recognizes that on parched spiritual landscapes new things could happen and, in our time, are happening. It knows and shows that the story of Christian response is not confined to past Early Christian or Christian Good Old Days eras. The Spirit is there to empower and be witnessed to in the mix that we can also call Good New Days. Those who do observe it celebrate the surprising workings of a Spirit who makes Jesus, a story of the past, into Jesus Christ, who belongs to the present and is the power of the future.
Grist For The Mill
Acts 2:2-21
"Even upon my slaves, both men and women ..." says Yahweh in Joel, now quoted by Peter, "I will pour out my Spirit." And "they shall prophesy."
We can have a bit of special pleasure with this line of this text. Like all holiday texts, Acts 2 has been picked over from many angles. There are winds on which to comment, and tongues of fire, and defenses against the charge of drunkenness. Most of all, there is the strange experience of languages, a semi-repeat of the Babel story. Now people of many tongues come together through the action of the Spirit.
And there is the long quotation in Peter's sermon, a set of verses from Joel the prophet. If this was to explain away the charge of intoxication, it is an intoxicating way to do it. Here is a jumble of creatively upsetting expressions and experiences, a topsy-turvy of that world's, the world's, our world's way of thinking about how God gets prophecy accomplished.
What business do the very young people have on this scene? They are not ready; they have not yet been to seminary. And the old, old ones? They are supposed to remember, but they are likely to forget their dreams. The heavens play their part in this drama. Blood and fire and mist and darkness all announce the big change. But that slaves should be empowered to prophesy? The ancient world, in Joel's time and in Peter's time, had no room for them, no time to give them, no hearing they were ready to offer.
And that the prophet and preacher and evangelist make much of the fact that even -- where are the italics? -- slaves "both men and women ... shall prophesy"? What is going on here? Think about that.
1 Corinthians 1:3b-13
We have a mantra in these verses, all dealing with the single word placed before "Spirit." Same Spirit. The Spirit. The Spirit. Same Spirit. One Spirit. Same Spirit. The Spirit. One Spirit. One Spirit. Pardon my being repetitious, but it is Paul's fault. He was eager and now I am to get that one thought across by reference to the definite article and the concepts of "same" and "one."
Why? Because anyone looking at the Spirit-filled Christian world would be tempted to forget the theme and assign the activity to many inspirations, many spirits. There are almost 25,000 Christian denominations, each of them probably giving some Spiritual justification for separate existence. There are 1.7 billion people called by the name of Christ. Many of them are moved by the Spirit to express the power of God. Some through bad grammar and some through good. Some with organs and some with guitars. Some with a cup of water to the thirsty and others with doctoral dissertations. (We are talking about miracles, after Pentecost.) They seem to go off in all directions.
They do. They are supposed to, in a world that God created with diversity. But these individuals, sects, sets of talent, anarchic as they may appear, have not been merely so. There has been an "-archy" to them, a way of expressing authority and effecting God's work in the world. What gives them authority and makes them effective is this one and the same "the" Spirit. We have to do nothing except to test the spirits, to see whether they derive from this One, whether they are of God. More often than not they manifestly have been and are so. So we learn and rejoice and send them along the way.
John 7:37-39
Some days commentators must want to hide behind lecterns or jump out of windows or claim that they have the flu or their eyes are blurry or their hands are shaky, and they would like to be excused from commenting. The texts are too rich but also too obscure.
I, and you with me, am not likely to take drastic action in the face of this one. But we are allowed to gasp a bit and fall into near-silence. The problem has to do with all that is meant in respect to what or who is meant by "Spirit" here.
There had, after all, been a Spirit to whom to witness in ancient prophetic times. That was what the text from Joel was about hundreds of years before the Gospel of John was written. Yet here we hear that there had been "no Spirit" as yet, because "Jesus was not yet glorified."
God can work old things out of new things and new things out of old things. So something fresh must be meant in the current reference to the coming of the Spirit. It was. What occurred at Pentecost and in the witness of the New Testament letters was not a repudiation of what had been said in ancient days so much as a complementing of them.
Yet in a world in which Christ had been glorified, which meant and means in a world in which he had died, been raised, and ascended, something, everything, is supposed to be and to look different. The New Creation had begun. And in the language of John's gospel, it would continue, because it was given channels through which to flow, streams through which its renewing party would flow to others. These words were framed in this gospel after Jesus was glorified. By then people had been inflamed.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Numbers 11:24-30 (Lutheran alternate text)
Here we go again: the good Lord, true to form, is getting carried away once more, breaking out of all the limits we would like to impose, pouring out excess until it is spilling all over everything.
The story itself is rich. Leading the people out of bondage, Moses has run into a double problem. One is with supplies. With a claimed retinue of 600,000 -- still a fairly large city -- on foot in the wilderness (v. 21), this shouldn't be a surprise. Neither should the complaints. As any experienced pastor knows, not even parting the Red Sea and a continuous supply of supernatural manna would satisfy some people. In fact, Egypt is starting to look good. If only there was a little meat to go with the bread, we could have hamburgers!
The other problem is structure. Moses is griping right along with the rest of them. It sounds like he has just been through an annual meeting: "Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of this people on me? Did I conceive all this people?" (vv. 11-12). All these people grumbling and complaining and all he's got is a couple of assistant pastors!
Having heard both complaints, the good Lord sets out to answer -- but not with either balance or equanimity. If the people want meat, they can have it -- enough to make them sick (v. 19), enough to make them think that a tornado hit the McDonald's factory. Only the meat is quail, so that the ground is covered with them, a couple of yards deep and spread out for days' worth of walking.
The answer to the structural problem spills over the edges just as well. Following instruction, Moses gathers the seventy. In addition to their natural gifts, they receive a spiritual endowment -- a one-time-only prophetic gift indicating their qualification to serve with Moses. If Moses needs help, he's got it now.
But typically, when God's grace starts to flow it's a little difficult to contain. Eldad and Medad, a couple of characters left hanging around the tents for who knows what purpose, receive the spirit just like the seventy led outside the camp to stand in line.
It's enough to make a bureaucrat nervous. Sounding like he's just returned from his office in support to ministries, Joshua -- not surprisingly, an assistant -- wants this unfortunate spillage contained (v. 28).
But by this time, Moses knows better. Having griped himself, he's got quail to clean and probably the results of a sudden influx of meat in a vegetarian diet as well. When you take on the good Lord, you live with the results.
